The Green caldron - University Library

March, 1958 29
The total offers of Champaign county are estimated, in cash, at $285,000."
The committee then gave similar detailed reports on the bids of the other
counties, which may be summed up as follows
McLean County's bids totaled $470,000 for a university to be established
in Bloomington.
Logan County offered bonds and properties valued at $385,000 for the
establishment of the university in Lincoln.
Morgan County offered some $315,000 in bonds and property plus the
Illinois College valued at $176,000, which was located in Jacksonville, for a
total of $491,000.
The Champaign group arose in arms after the presentation of the joint
committee report to the general assembly. The Board of Supervisors issued a
statement claiming that "Champaign County's bid, if valued as the joint com-
mittee valued McLean's bid, would have amounted to $555,400, an excess
of $85,000 over Bloomington . . . also that a scarcity of water in and about
Bloomington rendered it wholly impracticable as a site."^^ Upon hearing of
this, McLean County replied by issuing a circular which was distributed to
the general assembly. The circular gave wholehearted support to the joint
committee for estimating the bids at actual cash value and not on local assess-
ments. The charge about the "scarcity of water in and about Bloomington"
was denotmced as entirely false.
By this time Champaign County's methods were regarded by her com-
petitors as highly unfair. Her lobbying committee, her apparent influence over
the Chicago and Springfield newspapers, and her exaggerated reports of the
value of her bid made her a prime target for criticism from other communities
and, surprisingly, from certain home-town interests. A circular was distributed
in Springfield on February 6th, supposedly subscribed to by a group of Cham-
paign residents. The circular, which was reprinted by the Bloomington Pantagraph,
stated : "We believe that a good portion of the five thousand dollars
appropriated [by the Champaign County Board of Supervisors] in December,
1866, has already been used to bribe the public press, and that almost the entire
sum [$15,000] is to be squandered corruptly, as the five thousand before."^"
There seems to have been some suspicion that this circular was published by
one of the competitive communities.
On February 20, 1867, House Bill No. 70— "an act to provide for the
organization, endowment and maintenance of the Illinois Industrial University"—was
read to the lower chamber of the general assembly. ^^ Section eleven
of the bill provided for the location of the university in Champaign Cotmty.
After the reading, Mr. Eppler, of Jacksonville, moved for the adoption of an
"^^
Reports made to the General Assembly of Illinois, 1867 (Springfield, 1867), 1 : 443-5.
^® Turner Manuscripts, Springfield, as quoted by Powell, p. 259.
^ Bloomington Pantograph, February 8, 1867, as quoted by Powell, p. 260.
^ Journal of the House of Representatives of the Twenty-fifth General Assembly of
the State of Illinois, 1867 (Springfield, 1867), II :
442.
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